With the winter holidays fast approaching, now is the time to make our wish lists. There are plenty of presents EFF would like to receive for the holidays — the defeat of the Internet blacklist bills SOPA and PIPA would make a great start — but here are just a few of the things that companies could do to protect digital civil liberties this season:

Earlier today, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Facebook over allegations that the social network operator deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly expanding that which is shared and made public. We are heartened to see that many of the provisions of the settlement are in alignment with the Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users that EFF proposed in May 2010.

In the past week, the larger Internet community has joined EFF in sounding the alarm about the new copyright bill, now known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), as it makes its way through the U.S. House. The bill threatens to transform copyright law, pushing Internet intermediaries—from Facebook to your ISP—to censor whole swaths of the Internet. SOPA could forever alter social networks, stifle innovation and creativity, and destroy jobs, which is why Rep.

Proponents of pseudonymity scored a major victory today, when Google executive Vic Gundotra revealed at the Web 2.0 Summit that social networking service Google+ will begin supporting pseudonyms and other types of identity.

The news comes after several months of what has been dubbed Nymwars, in which opposing parties have debated--often heatedly--the merits of the Google+ policy requiring users to identify using their "common name." While EFF recognizes the rights of companies to determine their own policies, we have repeatedlytaken the side of users who have argued that the use of a pseudonym grants them greater freedom in expressing themselves online.